Abstract
Coastal areas are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change. The immediate impacts of temperature, precipitation and sea-level change affect rich but already threatened ecological systems and the most populated, highly developed, and economically vibrant regions of human activity on the planet. The specific vulnerabilities, impacts and adaptation options and activities vary greatly across the coastal areas of the US. The charge given to the coastal chapter team of the third US National Climate Assessment (NCA3, released in May 2014) was to discern the key vulnerabilities and most important cross-cutting concerns across the extensive coastline of the US. This paper is a reflection on what the coastal chapter team accomplished and how it was done (including author selection, staff support, technical inputs, the chapter development process, within- and cross-chapter integration, the review process, the delivery and high-impact release, the timeline of key assessment steps, and evaluation of the chapter development process). It concludes with eight lessons that might inform the activities of future collaborative author teams writing transdisciplinary, integrated assessment reports.
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Notes
There is a significant difference in burden on authors depending on their employment status: for full-time, salaried individuals participation in an assessment effort does imply extra work and personal sacrifice while for soft-money researchers and consultants, participation means actual salary loss. Thus, authors must carefully assess their ability to commit to the required amount of work.
This intense review process involving federal agencies and the White House is common procedure for all high-impact Federal Advisory Committee reports intended for adoption by the government.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the NCA3 coastal chapter team, its many contributors, the NCA staff family, and particularly Emily Wallace and Murielle Gamache-Morris for their assistance throughout the coastal chapter development. The latter also helped with the production of figures for this paper. Kathy Jacobs, Laura Petes, Emily Wallace, and three anonymous reviewers provided comments on an earlier draft of this paper, though none is responsible for the final outcome.
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“This article is part of a special issue on “The National Climate Assessment: Innovations in Science and Engagement” edited by Katharine Jacobs, Susanne Moser, and James Buizer.”
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Moser, S.C., Davidson, M.A. The third national climate assessment’s coastal chapter: the making of an integrated assessment. Climatic Change 135, 127–141 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1512-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1512-1